Explaining the Determinants of Brexit - Chosenness, Myths, Trauma in the Memory of Leave Voters.docx (original) (raw)
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An Assessment of Brexit Referendum Outcomes on the Basis of National Identity
The Brexit Referendum took its place on the political history of world as one of the most important events in 2016 due to its covering outcomes on which it influenced not only perception of the idea of political integration of UK’s policy-makers but also other actors that interacted with European Union came to querying the future of European Union. Some political scientists viewed that Brexit Referendum has been a reflection of opposite voices against European integration which almost restricted the sovereignty of nation-states. While European Union had been established under the roof of liberal ideas so as to ensuring the permanent peace in the continent by building a kind of economic cooperation in 1950’s, nation-states were pleased to become a member of that organisation in order not to limited their political elbow room. Earlier in the 90’s, European elites began to transform the nature of the European project. They assumed that European integration is an irreversible process that started with economic integration and will end up with transforming into a political integration. Indeed, their thought was consistent with the theory of the behaviour of a state in an international organisation. However, contrary to their assumption, monster of nation-states had reinvigorated and laid the foundation of concealed separatist ideas. Sudden economic declining and refugee crisis caused to emerge those ideas and United Kingdom opted to leave from the union as a result. On the other hand, a state resisted to become a part of Europeanisation instead of melting in that pot although two parties have had almost the same identity and historical past. Therefore, Brexit Referendum opened a new window on a new perspective for the EU elites and enabled them to assess from that lens. Outcomes of the decision of leaving should be examined on the context of national identity. In that text, dimension of the clash of identity between European Union and United Kingdom will be analysed and tried to find the reason why that differentiation has emerged under the political and historical framework.
Brexit Voting Differences and Their Origins : A Comparison Between England, Scotland and Wales
2018
The following thesis will examine and analyze the differences between England, Scotland and Wales in the British referendum on EU membership of 2016. Existing scientific literature offers many singular approaches as to why there were differences in voting behavior between the three British countries but mostly fail to acknowledge the possibility of a combination of plausible causes. Influencing factors of national identity, socio-demographics and attitude towards the EU are the origin of Scotland voting to remain in the EU while England and Wales favored the Brexit. As the socio-demographic factor of education and attitude towards the EU proved to be the most influential on the vote choice in the Brexit referendum, the strength of national identity in the three British countries appeared to account for certain differences between Scotland and its neighbors. This paper used the rich data set of wave 8 of the British Election Studies with over 30,000 respondents that originates from a...
Since the United Kingdom’s referendum on European Union membership, a number of explanations have been put forward for the vote to leave. In this article, we argue that none of them provides a satisfactory account. We then outline an alternative explanation. The UK has long been one of the most Eurosceptic countries in the EU, and the reason why is that Britons have a weaker sense of European identity––an identity which is rooted in specific aspects of the country’s history. Since the early 1990s, Britons’ Euroscepticism has been amplified by four key developments: the ERM crisis; the increasing pace of European integration; the Eurozone debt crisis; and immigration from Eastern Europe. Our explanation answers two critical questions: ‘Why did the UK that voted to leave, rather than any other member state?’; and, ‘Why did the UK vote to Leave in 2016, rather than at any point in the past?’
National Atmospheres and the 'Brexit' Revolt
Society and Space open site, 2016
There is no shortage of opinion pieces claiming to know what the Referendum held on 23 June 2016 on the UK's membership of the European Union represents. ii Yet in these early months, it is by no means clear what kind of an event this was and what might yet unfold from it. What is clearer is how this political moment has been felt, embodied and sensed, at least among many on the progressive Left. I know that I'm not alone in feeling exhausted by emotions as well as by the intensified atmospheres of fear, shame and anger (Orbach, 2016). In this vote, a right wing English nationalism iii that erupts from time to time bloomed in a thousand tiny ways. The heightened nationalist atmosphere led to a marked rise in racist attacks and hate crimes against minorities. iv Following the initial impasse that came with the result, the UK now has a more right wing government than it had previously and a Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs that has a history of making racist statements. All this seems to have been legitimised, or grudgingly accepted, at least for the moment. How might we understand and place this revitalised nationalism as well as the ways in which it circulated in and through this particular referendum campaign? What made this nationalist atmosphere possible and what does it mean for the politics of the Left? The decision that the UK should leave the European Union cannot be blamed on the poor, uneducated or abject. As Geography Professor Danny Dorling has shown (2016), most people who voted 'Leave' lived in the south of England. And of all those who voted 'Leave', 59% were in the middle classes (A, B, or C1 social groups). According to Dorling's analysis, the proportion of 'Leave' voters who were of the lowest two social classes (D and E) was just 24%. He concludes that 'Leave voters among the middle class were crucial to the final result' (Dorling, 2016: 1). This constituency and noisy minority are aunts, fathers, bosses and neighbours: they are the people who have 'wanted to have their say on 'Europe'' for a long time. Nick Clegg, former leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minister between 2010-2015 apparently insisted several times in talks with former Prime Minister David Cameron that a government cannot afford to hand them the microphone (Clegg, 2016). In the event, this core anti-Europeanism combined and blended with other political grievances and feelings. The Referendum-initially the result of an internal Conservative party struggle-thereby managed to expose a deep vacuum in ideas, narratives and visions among the UK political parties. It is this vacuum that enabled English nationalism to take hold and expand its reach. This particular form of nationalism is nostalgic for Britain's 'greatness', melancholic for a 'purer' British society (Gilroy, 2004), and defensive about the privileges that it enjoys and the extent to which it might share those with others. However, it can't be mapped directly onto 'England': it's a
Journal of World Sociopolitical Stidies, 2020
The Brexit, UK's withdrawal from the EU in 2020 was a pivotal moment in the history of Europe. The United Kingdom and the European Union have a longstanding relationship, which dates to 1973; however, against all expectations, in a referendum on June 23, 2016, more than 51.9% of the British people voted to leave the EU. Certain scholars believe that the British national identity was one of the sources of the UK hostility toward a European integration. An important question to discuss regarding this hostility is: how did the unique formation of the British identity drive the majority of people to vote in favour of leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum? This question is investigated in this research through the theoretical framework of the Social Identity Theory. Relying on a qualitative methodology, data was gathered from various survey polls, such as Ipsos MORI, Eurobarometer and British Social Attitudes (BSA) surveys. Findings indicate that the British identity has not been Europeanised as much as other European countries yet, and that Britain's weak sense of European identity was a key contributor to the Brexit vote.
The UK government has been renegotiating aspects of Britain's terms of membership of the European Union (EU) with a view to putting those revised terms to a referendum vote in which people will be invited to choose between remaining in the EU or leaving. A wide range of issues have been discussed during the course of this process so far, including the impact of EU membership on migration, Britain's economy, the country's welfare bill, and the sovereignty and security of the UK. So far, this primarily is not striking at all considering Great Britain long-standing 'struggle' with EU ever since they joined in 1973. British remain significantly less enthusiastic than their neighbours about EU membership and the EU more widely. That a large number in Britain share a Eurosceptic outlook can also be seen in their responses to the question of how they intend to vote at the referendum, which should first be situated in broader context.
EUROPEAN BUT NOT EUROPEAN ENOUGH: THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF BREXIT
On 23 June the United Kingdom held a referendum to gauge public support for continued British membership of the European Union with a majority voting in favour of 'Leave'. The causes of 'Brexit' have garnered significant attention from academics and commentators, with many explanations focusing on issues of sovereignty, immigration, fiscal austerity, xenophobia and imperial nostalgia, while others have looked to socio-demographic divides based on age, class and the 'winners and losers of globalisation'. We argue that these explanations fail to answer the key aggregate-level questions of why Britain voted to leave now, rather than at any other time, and why Britain, rather than any other member state, voted to leave. We account for Brexit by showing that Britain was always more Eurosceptic than other member states due, ultimately, to historical reasons that today manifest themselves in uniquely weak micro-level integration and that this tension became increasingly apparent as European integration deepened. We then show how post-2004 immigration mobilised the British working and lower middle class, whose consistent Euroscepticism had, until the referendum, been silenced by the UK's pre-2010 party system's consensus on membership. We end by considering the potential ramifications of the referendum for the future of the UK and the EU.
Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 2019
Cassirer's notion of myth and Langer's process philosophy are used to provide a novel perspective upon how feelings were both expressed and organised in the Brexit referendum, showing how multiple, overlapping organisations of feelings created a set of emergent rationalities. Political parties and campaigns, the media, and lived experience serve as analytic foci, and various feelings are identified. It is concluded that the result was largely rational on its own terms and that understanding this is central to the social psychology of Brexit.